WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

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Chapter 23: Money Follows Naturally (5)

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"Wait, hold on, did you just say I've been brainwashed? What kind of training do you people give rookies that they'd say something this disrespectful!"

Detective Mierou heard the accusation and immediately started raging. The other officers glanced at Kang Jin-ho with looks that said, isn't brainwashing a bit much? but Kang Jin-ho paid them no mind.

"Sorry for jumping straight to the point without preamble. But there's no time. Please, sit down."

Kang Jin-ho ignored Mierou's outburst and calmly sat in his chair, staring the detective down.

In truth, Kang Jin-ho had already pieced together the whole picture the moment Mierou mentioned a bizarre murder from the night before. Only a handful of villains in Light City pulled off that particular trick.

A quasi locked-room case where everyone had killed everyone else, no survivors left. That was Marionette's work. 3-rank villain.

Kang Jin-ho had solved this exact case several times over his thousands of hours of playtime. And there was one signature trap baked into every Marionette case: the NPC who brought in the case report was, without fail, already brainwashed by Marionette.

Once it had been a C-rank hero. Once it had been a Hero Association staff member. And once, just like now, it had been Detective Mierou. Every single time, without exception, they'd been under Marionette's control, and every single time, they'd betrayed the investigation at the worst possible moment.

"I'll start once you're seated, Detective. I'll say it again, there's no time to waste."

Kang Jin-ho had already worked it all out in his head, and he sat there with a cold, unyielding air, offering no room for compromise.

"...East Precinct 7 is going to answer for this later."

Grinding his teeth, Mierou dropped into the chair with obvious displeasure. Only then did Kang Jin-ho begin.

"First, I sensed something was wrong the moment Detective Mierou walked into this station."

"I hadn't even done anything yet. What exactly was wrong?"

Mierou sneered, but Kang Jin-ho ignored the jab and kept going.

"Does everyone here know who Detective Mierou is?"

"..."

"What, is it too awkward to talk about me while I'm sitting right here?"

None of the officers seemed eager to volunteer an explanation. Eventually the horned, hulking Black man stepped in. Precinct Chief Raphael.

"Detective Mierou's pretty famous. Gave up being a hero to become a cop. Even a C-rank hero makes way more than police pay, so that's a big deal."

Kang Jin-ho nodded at that.

"Right. Since the chief seems to know Detective Mierou well, let me ask this. Did you also know Detective Mierou has a cleanliness obsession?"

"Yeah, that's kind of the thing too. Heard people around him get annoyed by how much of a neat freak he is. Oh, sorry, forget I said that."

"...I'm aware people don't like how meticulous I am."

Mierou answered through gritted teeth. Kang Jin-ho snapped his fingers.

"Then think about it. Someone with that severe a cleanliness obsession, what did he do the moment he walked into this station?"

"Uh... cleaned his glasses?"

"Fogged the lenses with a breath and gave them a rough wipe. If Detective Mierou really had a cleanliness obsession, wouldn't a clean handkerchief or a microfiber cloth be the minimum? There's a handkerchief right there in the breast pocket."

"...huh. Good point."

Only then did the other officers' eyes widen in surprise. Kang Jin-ho didn't stop there.

"That's not all. Look closely at the detective's body right now."

"...my body?"

"Yes. Some of you sharp-eyed ones may already have noticed, but Detective Mierou is sweating heavily, the eyes aren't focusing properly, and there's a faint tremor around the eyelids. Those are textbook symptoms of a mental suggestion planted in the brain, disrupting the autonomic nervous system."

"No way!"

The other officers scrambled to inspect Mierou's condition. With the sudden visit from headquarters, none of them had thought to check before, but now that they looked, sure enough, the body was damp with sweat and the eyelids were twitching.

"Wait, while the rest of us were sitting here wondering why this guy showed up, Jin-ho was already checking his condition?"

"...didn't even cross my mind."

The officers of Precinct 7 stared at Kang Jin-ho, impressed that he'd kept his head and assessed the situation without getting swept up in it.

"Wait, wait! Then does that mean Detective Mierou's weirdly dry skin, and those extreme dark circles, that's from the brainwashing too?"

Chief Raphael shot up from his seat as if he'd just made a discovery.

"No, that's just how Detective Mierou normally looks."

"...let's pretend you didn't hear that, Detective."

The chief quietly sat back down.

"...continue."

Mierou said it with a slight tremor in the voice. Kang Jin-ho picked the thread back up.

"And the clincher. An elite like yourself gets dispatched from headquarters, and the official notice arrives in a rush, right before showing up? That's sloppy procedure. Even forgetting to send it before leaving, there would have been plenty of chances to contact us on the way."

"Hm, that's true. Detective Mierou's known for meticulous work. So rookie, what you're saying is, the detective was already brainwashed before even getting here?"

"Exactly. A person's small habits don't change easily. But everything Detective Mierou showed us today was wildly out of step with the reputation. One inconsistency, sure, could happen. But three at once? That's when I started suspecting brainwashing. Someone under mind control acts differently than usual, because of the effect the ability has on their brain."

"..."

Mierou said nothing, jaw clenched, biting down on the lower lip.

"So let's connect it to the case. You said there was a bizarre incident last night, a locked room where everyone killed everyone, no survivors. The moment I heard that, I was sure it was the work of a mind-control type superhuman. That kind of ability makes something like that entirely possible."

Kang Jin-ho pointed a finger at Mierou.

"And right on cue, Detective Mierou is acting nothing like the usual self. Are these two things really unrelated? Really just coincidence? I don't think it's a logical leap to say Detective Mierou was brainwashed, and that whoever did it is the same person behind the locked-room murders."

"You're saying this is all one villain's work?"

"Yes. Given that Detective Mierou's sense of self still seems mostly intact, I'd guess this is the kind of ability that triggers on a specific cue rather than staying active constantly. Among villains stronger than Detective Mierou, the type who plants a mind-control suggestion in advance and triggers it at the critical moment..."

At that point, Park Eun-yeong, who'd been listening with visible interest, tossed out casually,

"Sounds like 3-rank villain, Marionette."

"Exactly, senior. That's what I thought too."

Kang Jin-ho nodded, grateful that Eun-yeong had handed him the answer right on time.

His confident reply settled over the station like a weight.

"Marionette, you mean..."

"It has to be..."

3-rank villain, Marionette.

In raw destructive power alone she might fall short compared to other 3-ranks, but her cunning use of her ability had the Hero Association quietly debating whether she should be bumped up to 2-rank.

And no wonder. Marionette always killed through someone else's hands. Catch the murder suspect and all you'd get was a puppet. Chase down the real culprit and by then the true self had long since vanished. Even with superhuman methods, a mind-control ability like hers made her almost impossible to catch.

Worse, she didn't kill for money or valuables. She killed for pleasure. Which made her an enormous headache for the Hero Association.

"Marionette's ability... if she keeps bare skin in contact for over ten seconds, she can plant a specific 'trigger word' as a suggestion in the brain. Say that word later and she can puppet the target for a set amount of time. I heard she usually uses seduction to get the ten seconds."

When Park Eun-yeong said that, the other officers turned suspicious looks toward Mierou.

"N, no! It's really not that!"

"It wouldn't have been seduction."

Mierou panicked hard. Kang Jin-ho, beside him, backed up the claim of innocence.

"Detective. Have you used public transit recently?"

"No? Usually a car... wait."

Mierou's voice trailed off partway through the answer.

"A little while ago... I think I took the subway. There was a car accident at an intersection, couldn't drive, so I took the subway... maybe? I don't remember it clearly."

"If an accident jammed up traffic, the subway would've been packed. Packed enough that skin contact with strangers wouldn't raise an eyebrow."

"...!"

"That's probably when Marionette got to you. Detective Mierou, I'm certain the 'suggestion' was planted on the subway."

Mierou fell silent. Up until now it had been half-conviction, half-denial about whether the brainwashing was real, but the gap in memory sealed it. Mierou really had been under Marionette's control.

The other officers stared at Kang Jin-ho with stunned expressions, and only Eun-yeong, smiling pleasantly, asked him a question.

"So, Jin-ho, what do you think Marionette's goal was? Killing those people and brainwashing Detective Mierou, what was the point?"

"A trap, probably. Sooner or later a hero or the police would come to investigate the murders. Imagine the shock of finding out the elite investigator you thought was on your side had actually been a brainwashed puppet the whole time. The fact that Detective Mierou tried to get me alone at the crime scene was probably part of the suggestion too. A crowd would make things harder for Marionette."

Thud.

Detective Mierou couldn't stay in the chair any longer and sank straight to the floor, not even caring that dust was getting on him.

Mierou was disgusted with himself. Getting played this openly by a villain's scheme, used like bait without even realizing it, it made Mierou sick.

Some ace of headquarters. Some elite investigator. Not even a 1-rank or 2-rank villain, just a 3-rank, and Mierou had been used like this. That was the reality of it.

And worse than any of that, it stung to have this rookie officer figure out the truth before Mierou had. Mierou was the fake, the chaff. The rookie was the real thing.

"Damn it, damn it..."

Tears of frustration rolled down Detective Mierou's face.

"You don't need to blame yourself so much. Mind control is difficult for the victim to notice on their own. The best anyone can do is catch the change from the outside."

Kang Jin-ho said it like comfort. Chief Raphael added, his voice gentle,

"It's fine. We know the rude comments earlier, the arrogant attitude, all of that was the brainwashing talking. None of us are going to think less of you, Detective. Don't worry about it."

"No, that's just how Detective Mierou normally is."

"..."

Detective Mierou wept and ground his teeth.

Now that was going too far!

Footnotes:

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